AP 118 · No. 11 Section II · Aircraft Plate 129 / 354

Plate 129 of 354 · Second World War · Heavy bomber and anti-shipping aircraft

Dornier Do 217 E-4

Do 217 E-4 ‘U5+NT’, painted as Dornier Do 217 E-4 ‘U5+NT’ of 9. Staffel, Kampfgeschwader 2, photographed by Dornier in 1942: a four-seat twin-engined bomber with two BMW 801 fourteen-cylinder radials driving three-bladed propellers, a glazed ‘beetle’s eye’ nose with a 20 mm cannon, a dorsal gun turret, a ventral gun gondola, a shoulder wing spanning 19 m and twin endplate fins, shown tail down on its wheels: plain dark green on the fuselage sides, nose and spine, black lower fuselage, undersides, fins and rudders as a night bomber over England, the code ‘U5’ in black ahead of the black and white fuselage cross with a white ‘N’ and black ‘T’ behind it, white-edged black swastikas, ‘NT’ and the Werknummer on the fins, and a green splinter pattern on the upper wings and tailplane, which no photograph of this aircraft shows, so it follows standard practice (shape from a Do 217 E-4 three-view scaled to the published span and length, checked against a second three-view, a 1942 cutaway and photographs of this aircraft).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Dornier Do 217 E-4 ‘U5+NT’ of 9. Staffel, Kampfgeschwader 2, photographed by Dornier in 1942: a four-seat twin-engined bomber with two BMW 801 fourteen-cylinder radials driving three-bladed propellers, a glazed ‘beetle’s eye’ nose with a 20 mm cannon, a dorsal gun turret, a ventral gun gondola, a shoulder wing spanning 19 m and twin endplate fins, shown tail down on its wheels: plain dark green on the fuselage sides, nose and spine, black lower fuselage, undersides, fins and rudders as a night bomber over England, the code ‘U5’ in black ahead of the black and white fuselage cross with a white ‘N’ and black ‘T’ behind it, white-edged black swastikas, ‘NT’ and the Werknummer on the fins, and a green splinter pattern on the upper wings and tailplane, which no photograph of this aircraft shows, so it follows standard practice (shape from a Do 217 E-4 three-view scaled to the published span and length, checked against a second three-view, a 1942 cutaway and photographs of this aircraft). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.6 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Do 217E, K & M); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Do 217 E-4 ‘U5+NT’ modelled here.

History

The Do 217 E-4

In 1937 the German Air Ministry asked Dornier for a bigger, heavier development of its Do 17, the slim ‘Flying Pencil’ bomber, able to carry more bombs further and to dive-bomb as well. Dornier kept the Do 17’s shoulder wing and twin-finned tail but drew a deeper, longer fuselage with a much larger bomb bay. The first prototype flew on 4 October 1938 and crashed a few days later; the type took more than two years of development, with several engines tried and a novel umbrella-like dive brake in the tail that never worked well, before the Do 217E with BMW 801 radials went into production.

The Do 217E reached II./KG 40 for attacks on shipping early in 1941, and later that year Kampfgeschwader 2 converted to it for night raids on Britain. In 1942 the Do 217s of KG 2 flew many of the ‘Baedeker’ raids on historic cities such as Exeter, Bath, Norwich and York, and they were used again in the ‘Baby Blitz’ on London in early 1944, losing heavily to the RAF’s night fighters. The E-4 was the main production version, with a 20 mm cannon in the glazed nose and a gun turret behind the cockpit; the K, with a new rounded nose, and the M, with Daimler-Benz inline engines, followed, and night-fighter versions were built as the Do 217J and N.

The Do 217 is best remembered as the first aircraft to sink ships with guided weapons. In August 1943 Do 217Es of II./KG 100 sank the sloop HMS Egret in the Bay of Biscay with Henschel Hs 293 glide bombs, and the following month Do 217Ks of III./KG 100 used Fritz X radio-guided bombs against the Italian fleet as it sailed to surrender. About 1,900 were built in all, and no complete Do 217 survives anywhere.

This airframe

Do 217 E-4 ‘U5+NT’, 9./KG 2

U5+NTThe airframe modelled

‘U5+NT’ is a Do 217 E-4 of 9. Staffel, Kampfgeschwader 2, the bomber wing that flew the Do 217 by night against Britain, photographed side-on on the ground by Dornier in 1942; its Werknummer on the fin reads as 4272, though it may be 4279. It is modelled because no complete Do 217 survives, and it is among the best-photographed single E-series aircraft. One of the photographs, in the San Diego Air & Space Museum’s archive, is captioned as an E-5, but nothing visible, such as the racks for the Hs 293 glide bomb, sets it apart from an E-4. None is in a UK museum. The model shows it standing tail down on its wheels: plain dark green on the fuselage sides, nose and spine, black on the lower fuselage, the gun gondola, the undersides, the fins and rudders, the code ‘U5’ in black ahead of the black and white fuselage cross with a white ‘N’ and a black ‘T’ behind it, and white-edged black swastikas, ‘NT’ and the Werknummer on the fins. Its shape comes from a Do 217 E-4 three-view scaled to the type’s span and length, checked against a second three-view, a 1942 cutaway and the photographs. The photographs show only its port side, so the starboard code follows standard practice; the upper wings and tailplane, which they do not show, carry the usual green splinter pattern and crosses; and the black undersides are judged from the tones of the black-and-white prints.

Where to see one

Not on charge

No complete Do 217 survives.

All 354 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.